Republican party regulars, like German industrialists in the 1930s, thought they would use the Christian right as a way to power—only to find that the fundamentalists have used them. The most powerful nation of earth is now in the hands of zealots, whose devotion to the Biblical faith of our fathers means a belief in Biblical science as well—until such time as a crippling disease awakens their faith in stem cell research.
Lawmakers in Kansas, Ohio, Texas, where next--?– are spending your time and money debating evolution and intelligent design. Madness is contagious, and wemust not be drawn into this conversation with the barking mad. There never was a conflict between religion and science, only between the science of 2,000 BC and the science of today.
It is no wonder that modern Republicans take this debate so seriously-- they’ve been devolving for years.This can be shown in the fossil record from Lincoln to Theodore Roosevelt to Reagan and Bush.
As shown in the diagram
the Republican in its natural state would repulse any electorate. Shown here with their kindly house mother, Mrs. Rove, candidates must be cleaned, shaved, taught to use simple tools, walk upright, and perform the speeches of others.
The chest thumping phase has discovered Fox “news”. He believes that John Kerry was a traitor for asking that we stop wasting our own soldiers, that Joe McCarthy was a great American, and the ravings of Ann Coulter have some connection to reality. This is akin to the fellow who saw a book once and thinks he read the whole library.
A little less filthy after a bath, the creature is able to read the essays of Pat Buchanan and Cal Thomas and recite simple phrases. Theirs is a politics of resentment, born in the schools where Catholicism embraced fascism as a bulwark against godless communism. People who spout morality are ipso facto moral. War criminals were misunderstood. Richard Nixon was a saint, I tell you, a saint. Mr. Nixon never had the lie about a blow job, I can tell you that. Strangely enough, their interests coincide with populist Democrats on the subject of American jobs being shipped overseas, but even broken clocks are right twice a day.
Freudians speak of a period when Republicans are strangely obsessed with other men’s penises and what they might be doing with them. The Republican animal now lives by Mark Twain's dictum that nothing needs reforming so much as other people's bad habits. Unmarried women who have sex will be punished as well. Fornicators cannot be trusted with their own bodies, and must be stopped from murdering an unwanted child. Their carelessness with a moment’s pleasure will chain them to fatherless children for a lifetime, because after the child is safely born we need have no more bother with it. A variant species, the Santorum of Pennsylvania, has expressed concern that an expanded marriage contract will lead to sex with dogs. This might never have occured to us until he brought it up.
In the penultimate stage, the specimen has evolved past the concerns of the flesh. He has read The Road to Serfdom and now has a rationalization for despising the poor. For him the Welfare State is the root of evil. He does not see the irony of his own serfdom as apologist for a Welfare State where millionaires find more charity than paupers. His concern for other people's genitalia has now refined itself into something called the Culture War. The appalling state of the popular arts is blamed on the fornicators, but nothing could be further from the truth. It is the result of the same free market forces that the creature worhips as the Invisible Hand of God. Our hypocrisy knows no bounds.
In the final stage of readiness, the Republican animal is polished enough to stand as a candidate. He has learned to shake hands, smile at inanities and not crap on the floor, with exceptions like DeLay of Texas. In Texas, crapping on the floor is something to be proud of, something that shows you know in your heart what's right and don't have to listen to anybody.
In summary, we can see why the party of Lincoln and Roosevelt now views view Darwin’s theory of evolution as an affront to
their precarious hold on humanity. We can also see why handlers such as Rove feel compelled to clean them up first. Red faces, a bright blue ass, and a strained expression on its face-- it would be easy to confuse the Republican with the baboon, were it not for the advanced social conscience of the baboon.
(And some days it takes more Stones than others...) Where Mythical Bestiary meets Contemporary Culture and Chews On Its Leg Until Covered with Slobber.
I've been interested in ancient technology all my life-- Hero's steam engine, the citric juice battery used by the Egyptians for electroplating-- and seeing this mystery restored and deciphered is a wondrous thing.
